Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 January 1984 — Page 17

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A|1 iefers to the editor should be addressed to the Jewish Post preference ^ ^ re,urned Short letters get

Even If Chains Are Gold The Arabs Are Oppressed

Editor, POST and OPINION: I would like to respond to Rabbi Yitzchak A. Sladowsky’s thoughtful letter published in The Post and Opinion issue of November 30. I agree with Rabbi Sladowsky’s position that the Jews should be guided not by the desire to please the antiSemites of the world but by the Law which has ensured our survival through the ages. The rabbi is also correct regarding the living conditions of the Arabs living in Israel proper as well as in Judea and Samaria. They, for the most part, enjoy a higher standard of living, a better educational system and more political and personal freedoms than their Arab brothers in their own lands. This is clear for all to see. I must agree with Sid Resnick, however, that the Palestinian Arabs living in the Land of Israel are an oppressed minority; regardless of their adequate living conditions and freedoms, the Arabs living in Israel do not have the same civil and economic rights enjoyed by the Jews; these rights are limited by the State and rightly so: Israel is a Jewish State.

We know of the hatred which the Arab, particularly the one residing in Israel, feels for the Jewish State. We also know of the desire of the Palestinian Arabs for their own homeland. This is their dream, and we must learn to accept it, even if at the present time it represents a deadly threat to the Jewish State. What is more important yet is the realization that this deadly threat cannot be removed until the right of the Palestinian Arabs to their own state is recognized and accepted not only by the Jews but by the rest of the world as well. Let us admit, therefore, that the Palestinian Arabs are justified in feeling oppressed, even if the chains are of gold and silk. We must accept their longing for freedom and for a homeland where they can achieve self-determination. It is likewise the right of the Jewish State to demand, as a matter of survival, the repatriation of the Arabs living within its borders. ALVARO A. YOSEF 1483 A Werner Park Fort Campbell, KY 42223

Famous American Jews Rebecca Gratz 1781-1869 Rebecca Gratz, the inspiration for Sir Walter Scott’s heroine in Ivanhoe, was bom in Philadelphia in 1781, the seventh of 12 children of Michael and Miriam Gratz. Her lather, in addition to being one of the leading merchants of the day, aided in outfitting an American expedition against the British at Detroit and Mackinac, and was a partner of Levi Hollingsworth, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, in the development of the territory now known as Fayette County, West Virginia. Five of her brothers were veterans of the American Revolution. The Gratz home, a famous gathering for Philadelplhia intellectuals, entertained many notables, among them Washington Irving, the artists Sully and Malbone, the actress Fanny Kemble, and the aristocrats of Philadelphia society. Washington Irving once described Rebecca so movingly to Sir Walter Scott that Scott was inspired to create the Rebecca of his imortal /vanhoe after her. Well known for her philanthropy in Philadelphia, Miss Gratz founded the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society, the first independent Jewish philanthropic agency. This society was a prototype for many of the city’s later welfare agencies. She was also the founder, in 1838, of the first Jewish Sunday School in the United States. She is buried in the historic Mikveh Israel Cemetery in Philadelphia, which dates back to 1738. This cemetery belongs to the Mikveh Israel Congregation, the second oldest in America and the recipient of the famed letter from George Washington on religious freedom, which he wrote shortly after becoming President. ©Copyright, 1978, B. Postal and Lionel Koppman, Reprinted from American Jewish Landmarks, published by Fleet Press Corp., New York.

REMEMBER THOSE YOU LOVED WITH A MEMORIAL GIFT TO THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY.

Editor's Note

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Changing Of Halacha L Only To Religious Anarchy

efforts even u they are pn Jewish and pro-Israel. If letter are being sent to The P-0 and also to other Jewish oublica

r~v iu please indicate when they send us letters which we cannot detect as form letters, to note in handwriting that other Jewish papers are also receiving them Quote Was Correct, But Resolution Lost Editor, POST and OPINION. You quoted me correctly concerning the resolution at the United Synagogue biennial convention, which would have directed Conservative synagogues to welcome at social functions non-Jewish teenagers of mixed marriages (i.e. when the mother is not Jewish and there has been no conversion). However, you incorrectly state that the resolution was adopted. The delegates overwhelmingly agreed with my position that social functions sponsored by Jewish institutions must endeavor to assure that all invitees are in fact Jewish. While we have an obligation to reach out to inter-married families and their children, we have an a priori obligation to provide a total Jewish socia 1 environment when Jewish teenagers are invited by Jewish institutions. Thus my statement as quoted in your article, "The boys and girls at 16 and 17 are at the beginning of the dating pattern. They could come to us in a few years from now and say (about their non-Jewish spouse), ‘Rabbi, we met in your synagogue. It was a dance in your synagogue.’ ” is indeed the issue. RABBI YAKLOV R. HILSENRATH Highland Park Conservative Temple and Center S. Third Ave. Highland Park, NY 08904

U.S. Tourist Dies; 6th Bomb Victim JERUSALEM - The sixth death from the bombing of the Jerusalem bus on Dec. 6 was an American tourist, Serena Sussman, whose husband and son flew to Israel for the funeral here. She had been given the trip to Israel on her sixtieth birthday as a surprise. The Sussmans are from South Carolina. Three of the others killed were children, of whom two were sisters. Nantucket Now Has Congregation NANTUCKET - This island now has its first formallyestablished congregation. Named Congregation Shirat Ha Yam, Song of the Sea, Morgan Levine has been elected as first president.

Editor, POST and OPINION: According to the report about the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations meeting in Atlanta, published by you (P-O, Nov. 23), one of the issues discussed at that meeting was “The question of change in The Law of Return barring Reform and Conservative Jews as automatic citizens when they make aliyah to Israel.” I am greatly surpri. d to find such false and mislea u.ig information in your otherwise responsible paper. Nobody has ever proposed to deny automatic Israeli citizenship to any Jew, whether he is Reform, Conservative or atheist, who chooses to settle in Israel. Any Jew born from a Jewish mother is regarded by the Halacha as a full Jew, whatever his convictions or lack of them are, and is entitled by the Law of Return to automatic Israeli citizenship unless he converted to another religion. The change being proposed in the Law of Return is to reiterate that a non-Jew, converting to Judaism and wishing to become automatically an Israeli citizen upon his immigration to Israel, has to be converted according to the Halachah. This would noi prevent anybody who converted not according to Halacha from becoming ultimately an Israeli citizen under other provisions of the Israeli citizenship laws. Becoming an Israeli citizen is, after all, an administrative matter, which does not affect the religious status of a person. A person claiming to be a Jew, because he was converted by some non-halachic ceremony invented by Reform, and obtaining one way or another Israeli citizenship, will still not be eligible to marry a real Jew (even a Reform or a Conservative one) in the State of Israel, because under Israeli Law (Law of Jurisdiction of Rabbinical Courts (marriages and divorces) 57131953, par 2) marriages and divorces of Jews in the State of Israel have to be performed according to Halachah. The Halachah does not recognize marriages between a Jew and a non-Jew and neither would the Halachah recognize as a Jew a person who underwent a nonHalachic conversion, or is a patrilineal “Schindler’s Jew.” In your editorial in the same issue of P-O, you hail as “wel-

come compromises” some new “marriage” ceremonies suggested for mixed marriages by the Reconstructionists and by a certain Reform rabbi from Washington, D.C. Mixed marriages are a cancer gnawing at the vitals of American Jewry, being the last stage before complete assimilation and loss of any trace of Jewish identity. It is a fact that in most cases children of mixed marriages are being lost to Judaism altogether. So what is so “welcome” about suggestions of ceremonies to accommodate some concealed guilt feelings of Jewish parties to mixed marriages and lower by this emotional barriers to such marriages, which some parents may still have. Religious rituals, particularly in such serious matters as marriages or conversions, are not Stull lor “creative” designers, and cannot constantly be changed anew, like women’s fashions or Broadway shows. I agree with Reform Rabbi David Max Einhom, who branded in his letter in the same issue of The P-O, the secular “marriage" ceremony concocted for mixed marriages by the Washington, D.C. Reform Rabbi Haberman, as “burlesque.” However, the “religious" mixed marriages performed by Reform Rabbi Einhorn himself are no less “burlesque,” because Jewish Religious Law, the Halachah, does not recognize mixed marriages and therefore such marriages do not have any Jew* sh religious meaning. Jewish Religious Law, the Halachah, cannot be changed by whims of individuals, committees or faculties of seminariei, trying to catch up with the latest social trends of the non-Jewish world. Whoever rejects the Halachah, either explicitly as Reform and Reconstructionists do, or implicitly de facto, as the Conservatives do, substitutes religious anarchy for Jewish religious law. Religious anarchy, like any other anarchy, can lead in the long run to a final dissolution of the non-halachic forms of Judaism and the loss of their adherence to the Jewish People, unless they turn back, as some of them are doing already, to the Eternal Guaranty of Jewish Survival, the Halachah. Y. ETZION 11 Fort George Hill New York, NY 10040

WZO Curbs Staff Perks, Expenses

JERUSALEM — Austerity measures instituted do not go so far as to curb the expense accounts of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization department chairmen during their frequent trips abroad, but they will have to do without new cars or even rental cars. Manpower will be frozen at the present 3000, ana overtime will be cut by one-fourth.

while staff who use their own automobiles will have to do with 15 percent less.

The Post and Opinion is completed Monday afternoons, taken to the printers that night and printed and mailed on Tuesday. Readers should receive the paper no later than Friday almost everywhere in the United States.

jary 4, 1984